Youve already figured out that your small business needs a web site to compete with the big boys and maintain every aspect of your relationship with your customers. But once you have your web site up and running, youll need web site promotion ideas so that people know about your web site. After all, no one will visit your web site if they dont know it exists.

The first of your website promotion ideas is submitting your web site to all the major search engines. Search engine traffic is a major draw to web sites and most web masters will tell you that the vast majority of their traffic is coming from search engine clicks. Most of the major search engines have a specific page you can use to submit your site. Once its submitted, it will usually take a few days to a week before it starts showing up in keyword searches.

Other web site promotion ideas include advertising your web site on internet message boards and discussion forums centered on subjects related in some way to your business. For example, if you run a small business selling pet supplies, you could go to message boards and discussion forums frequented by pet lovers.

Other tried and true web site promotion ideas include affiliate and banner exchanges. You can contact other web sites involved with the same target market and ask to exchange banners on each others web sites, or you can sign up at a banner exchange portal that will automatically generate banners for other sites on your site and banners for your site on other participating sites.

For even more web site promotion ideas, there are many online resources dedicated solely to teaching people how best to create awareness of their web site through the internet at large and strategies for attracting more visitors to their web site. Start with these basic ideas and when youre ready, explore for more!

So youre starting a small business. You figured out what you wanted to sell or do and went out and got it all set up, had your DBA framed and on the wall and now all you need is for someone to buy your product or use your service. Right?

How are you going to go about getting your public to know you even exist?

Promote! Promote! Promote!

Well that all sounds simple, but say youre a financial specialist, a boat builder or llama farmer. They probably didnt teach the basic principles of starting small business promotional campaigns in boat-builders school. So what do you need to know, and how do you go about it?

Lets start with the Basic Principles of promotion:

What is Promotion?

Promotion (promō′shun) n. Anything, as advertising, public appearances, etc., done to publicize (get the attention or interest of the public) a person, product, event, etc. The New Websters Concise Dictionary2003 Encyclopedic Edition

Why do you promote?

The purpose of promotion is to make sure people know you are in business. You promote because if you dont, you wont make it in business. You promote because it is communication that you need to engage in in order to survive. You promote in order to expand and get the attention or interest of the public for your products or services. You promote because if you dont, no one will know you exist and no one will buy from you andwell, you get the point.

How do you promote?

There are more ways than you would ever think. Have you ever heard someone say, I never promote and I am always busy OR I dont have to promote, all my business comes from word-of-mouth? They may not be aware of how theyre doing it, but I promise you they are promoting somewhere. Maybe they just go around telling everyone they talk to, that they dont promote. (Sound funny? Its still promoting.) Maybe their larger-than-life running water faucet in front of their store attracts so much attention that they dont need to do anything else. Well here are some ideas you can do knowingly to drive in the business.

Greeting your customers with a smile is a great place to start.

Calling your customers after they have had a chance to use your product is a good way to promote that you care about their experience with your organization. It can also create an opportunity to make more sales.

A neatly packaged product, the shipping label on straight, promotes that you take pride in what you do.

Always keep up-to-date brochures or catalogs about your business in your reception area for people to see and take with them.

If you have customers coming into your business, make sure they are greeted pleasantly, professionally, and immediately.

Anything that gets the attention or interest of the public for the company, its employees, its products or services (in a positive way) is promotion.
But how do you go about promoting to the masses?

Here is a story that could save you thousands of marketing and promotional pounds, as well as months or years of experience.

I was working as the Communications & Promotional Director in a medium size business. We were fortunate enough to have our own commercial printing press, that put out lots of very fancy letters, catalogs, brochures and other promotional items, and oh yes, envelopes to put them in. My full time pressman and his helpers, spent several days each week getting everything printed, cut, folded and sent over to the mailing house.

There, they had machines that automated all the stuffing, sorting, addressing and stamping. All in all everything was going very well. We were sending out about 40,000 pieces per week at a cost of about 10,800.00, and getting around 120 to 140 good leads per week. This generated an average of 2 new sales per week for a product that cost around 12,000, and re-sign income of around 45,000 more. We werent growing very fast, but we were making money.

THEN911 hit. ”

Suddenly, nobody wanted to open envelopes. Our leads were dropping to nothing. We were heading toward our own disaster like so many other companies did. I knew I needed to promote, but what good did it do if nobody read it!

I was talking to the owner of the mailing house and he suggested the use of POSTCARDS instead of letters. So we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, I had much less money to allocate towards promotion, so I started by sending about 20,000 postcards weekly. The total cost-per-piece, needing only one day on the presses, half the labor at the mail house and a substantial decrease in postage, was reduced by about 60%.

What was the result? Try 120 to 140 leads per week!

Why?

You don’t have to open a post card!

You see it right away, the bright picture is not hidden from view by an envelope.

The message leaps right out and you can’t ignore it or throw it in the trash unopened (the fate of many bulk mail pieces).

Postcards are the best medium to reach new customers when starting a small business promotional campaign.

Have you ever considered why SPAM has caused such a public backlash compared to the deafening silence from its unsolicited paper cousins of direct and junk mail? People seem to care a lot more about what enters their Inbox than their letterbox. And for the word care think about logical substitutes of notice, read and respond.

All this translates into campaign results that can surpass other forms of direct communication making it an ideal cost effective option for any small business owner.

And whats more I believe that as a small business owner the odds are stacked in their favour to become budding email marketing superstars.

Let me explain why.

Firstly, its about personality. E-mail messages written in a personal style seem to work the best. Writing this way doesnt seem to faze most small business owners. Usually their business shows more of their personality when dealing with customers than larger competitors so writing this way seems to be a natural option.

Secondly, a small business owner can understand what content that has a good chance of being read. With them working closely with customers they tend to understand what their customers want to know about and can easily translate this into articles and reports that will be read.

Thirdly, the time and cost efficient nature of email marketing ideally suits the busy small business owner. It can take the same amount of effort to create an email newsletter for 500 subscribers as it does 50,000. Plus the costs of an email production are a fraction of the alternative paper option.

For a small business owner a regular e-mail message can have as much personality and content to end up being the next best thing as a phone call from themselves, just more efficient and at a lot less costly to produce.

So there you have it, three reasons why small business owners can make it big in the Inbox. Have fun harnessing this great tool for your company.

Every day, the 25 million U.S. small-business owners juggle countless tasks including purchasing supplies, leading meetings, interacting with customers and handling finances. Business owners are often so preoccupied with daily operations, they lose sight of the bigger picture and neglect planning and investing.

Although filing a tax return may rank as one of the biggest causes of stress for a business owner, a subsequent refund check is an opportunity to reinvest in the company. Instead of simply using the money for operating expenses, small-business owners should direct the money into long-term purchases benefiting the company.

How to invest? Often, small businesses struggle to seem as credible and professional as larger competitors. A great investment is a key technology tool allowing the business, its people and the work to shine throughout the years.

Project an image of professionalism. For example, a digital projector promises a smooth, impactful presentation to clients and partners each and every time. Weighing a little over five pounds, products such as InFocus’ Work Big IN24 and IN26 are flexible projectors giving anyone who needs to demonstrate expertise in a persuasive presentation a tool to engage the audience. These long-lasting and dependable products fill a wall or screen with bright, vivid and crisp images, capturing every detail in a sales presentation, a pitch to win new business or a video montage to provoke interactive brainstorming sessions.

Get financially organized. Another great investment is small- business software to streamline tasks and reduce the hours spent on work not central to the business. The timesavings gained mean more energy can be directed elsewhere in the business. For example, software such as Microsoft Money Small Business has features to help manage business finances and better plan investments. It’s easy to create invoices, track spending and manage payroll with the intuitive tools in Microsoft Money.

Don’t wait to update! Beginning with tax refunds, business owners should commit to updating technology regularly. A few small investments can make employees more productive and enthusiastic. And the InFocus projector and Microsoft software are deductible expenses, qualifying for a discount of up to 35 percent.

It is a common fact that businesses wouldnt run as smoothly without capital. Even with a fixed investment for your mini-business, there are always unexpected expenses that will crop up from time to time. The only way to solve this problem is through small business loans. But, is it possible for someone who has a bad credit rating to avail such financial help? Yes, they can!

It is true that having a bad credit rating can hinder the possibility of vying for a financial loan to help your small enterprise. Many traditional and conservative financial institutions, like banks, are only accepting individuals with good credit scores, and shunning of the rest. But that is no longer the case today.

Secured and Unsecured loans

Considering the number of financial lenders in the market, many stay on the competitive side by offering small business loans despite bad credit status. These loans come in two basic forms: secured and unsecured.

Secured loans are financial aids with collateral as security, which can either be in residential or business property, or any assets with the same value. Unsecured loans are the opposite; lenders will give you the financial help you ask without any security at all, which can be useful if you dont have any plans in putting your assets at further risks.

Secured loans, however, allow you to loan larger amounts, unlike its counterpart, at lower interest rates and better payment terms. Unsecured loans are usually attached with a much higher interest rate, and much stricter payment schemes.

Also, unsecured loans require in-depth credit checks and assurances before you can be accepted for one. Since this type of loan is very risky, especially on the lenders point-of-view, they need to maximize the possibility of getting back what is owed in case things go wrong.

However, this can be easily achieved by approaching SBA or Small Business Administration for help. This organization will act as assurance to the lender regarding the unsecured loan despite your bad credit status.

Even if you have a bad credit status, you can easily get a small business loan by having ready documents that will testify the financial stability of your business. If youre venture is earning a sizable income, you can provide financial statements like balance sheets and income statements to give evidence to that fact.

Looking for a lender

When you search for a lender of a bad credit small business loan, you need to take into consideration some areas before you proceed. First, you need to keep in mind on the condition of the loan before you get one. Take into consideration interest rates, and payment terms and conditions if you can cope up with it.

This is usually the case when you go for secured loans, and using your properties as security. You need to keep in mind that failure to pay these loans can cost you your assets, as well as your business venture.

Also, this is a fine opportunity for you to build up your credit score while going for the bad credit loan. Try to look for one with payment schemes that you can readily afford. Prompt payment for these can boost your credit scores up a notch, which will improve of getting much better financial aids in the near future.

Most people think Santa Claus only works one night a year. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, product distribution takes place on one magical night, but Santa’s operation runs year round and is one of the largest manufacturing and distribution operations in the world.

You’ve probably never considered the fact that Santa is the CEO of a large organization that not only distributes a vast assortment of products throughout the world, but does so in a single night with just a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. Sam Walton would have killed to have Santa’s logistics manual.

Do I believe in Santa? You bet your red longjohns I do. I especially believe in Santa’s entrepreneurial spirit. Just consider all he does from an entrepreneurial point of view and I think you will start to believe, too.

Santa Is His Own Company Spokesperson

Santa is a brilliant marketer and knows that his image is the best marketing tool he has. No other face is as recognizable and no other entrepreneur has inspired so many songs. You’ll never hear “An Ode To Jack Welch” on the radio ten times a day.

Santa’s Customers Love Him

Just say his name around a group of kids and watch their little faces light up like Rudolph’s nose. You will never see Bill Gates get that kind of reaction. Heck, he can’t even make his own kids smile.

Santa Sets The Bar For All Entrepreneurs

When you list the traits of the perfect entrepreneur, Santa gets the highest marks. He has passion for his work. He loves his customers and will go to great lengths to make sure they are happy. He has the ability to spot consumer trends and bring products to market quickly. He can lead a large organization with a wink of his eye. He inspires those around him. He is tireless. He is dedicated. He is loyal. He is persistent. And above all, he is jolly. Name another jolly entrepreneur (other than Dave Thomas of Wendy’s fame). I bet you can’t.

Santa Is A Great Leader

Can you imagine trying to manage a few hundred giddy elves who are shut in year round and spend their off hours drinking spiked hot chocolate and doing who knows what with fairy dust? It would be enough to drive even the best of entrepreneurs to hide out at the North Pole. Somehow Santa manages the task without pulling his whiskers out. I expect he has a management system that promotes from within. The hard working elves get into management. The slackers are stuck cleaning up after the reindeer.

Santa Perfected “Just In Time” Manufacturing

Santa heads up one of the largest, most diverse manufacturing operations in the world. His product lines range from rag dolls to toy trains to rocking horses to baseball gloves for the little kids, to iPods and cellphones and diamond rings for us big kids. Santa’s factory runs year round, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and never, ever suffers from cost overrun or production shut downs. Santa perfected the “just in time” method of production that is used by many of the world’s largest manufacturers today.

Santa Pioneered Global Product Distribution

Santa is the king of single channel distribution. How else could he deliver millions of presents to good little girls and boys all around the world on a single night? Santa’s distribution process is a closely-guarded secret (elves and reindeer are required to sign iron-clad nondisclosure agreements), but I expect it involves a highly detailed logistics plan and the best CRM software on the planet. You never hear about Santa calling up a kid and telling them a present is backordered until July.

Santa’s Delivery & Tracking Systems Are Second To None

If you think FedEx is number one at tracking packages think again. Santa’s track record is spotless. He has never, ever missed a single delivery or left a box sitting on the porch in the rain. Every package is delivered in perfect shape, right under the tree.

Santa Wrote The Book On Customer Satisfaction

Santa proudly boasts a 100% perfect customer satisfaction rating. You never hear about class action lawsuits and Better Business Bureau complaints against St. NIck. Santa makes sure that his customers are happy and if they aren’t, he’ll come back next year to make things right. If JD Power could find him, I’m sure they would give Santa their Christmas Customer Satisfaction Award.

Santa Claus Is Watching You

Not everyone believes that Santa is the perfect entrepreneur. There are those kids who complain that Santa never brings what they ask for, but we grown ups know that Santa brings the gift that is deserved, not necessarily the gift that is asked for.

Here’s a little Christmas tip from your Uncle Tim, boys and girls, ladies and gents: If you get a lump of coal in your stocking this year it’s because you were bad and that’s what you deserved.

It was not because Santa dropped the ball.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Small Business Owners: Interview Questions That You Should Ask Your Applicants

Are you a small business owner? If you are, how is your business currently going? When first starting a small business, there are many small business owners who decide to start out small. This often involves being the only employee or just hiring family members. Limiting the number of employees that you start off with is a great way to limit your business expenses, but there may come a time when you need to hire additional help. If and when that time comes, do you know what you should do? If not, you will want to continue reading on.

Whether you run an online store, a storefront retail store, or an office-like business, you will need all job applicants to either submit their resumes or fill out a job application. In all honesty, it might be easier to have them do both. You can easily make your own job applications or you can purchase standard job applications from many office supplies stores, either on or offline. Once you have a collection of resumes and job applications, you may then want to think about going through those papers to find applicants that you would like to schedule a job interview with.

When it comes to finding the perfect employee or employees for your small business, the interview process plays an important role. It is during an interview where you are able to learn as much as you can about a job applicant, particularly if he or she is right for you and your small business. The best way that is this is done is by asking the right questions. Just a few of the many that questions that you will want to think about asking your job applicants are outlined below.

As a small business owner, you already know that you need to compete with larger businesses, ones that may have more money and resources than you do. The way that you can do this is with good customer service. Although it is important that you know this, your employees need to know this as well. You will want to ask your applicants if they know the difference between a large business and a small business, as well as what sets a small business apart from a large one. Also, ask them if they know why some customers prefer doing business with small businesses, like yours. If you cannot get the answers that you were looking for, it may be best to move on to the next applicant right away.

Since customer service is what often sets small businesses, like yours, apart from large corporations, you need to make sure that you hire employees who have good customer service skills. During a job interview, you will want to ask all of your applicants about their people skills. Do they think that they have good people skills? Do they find it easy to strike up conversations with customers or those who they dont personally know? You will want to hire an employee or employees who are easily able to communicate with customers, on a wide variety of different topics, including business topics and silly topics like the weather.

To ensure that you are getting an honest answer from your applicants, particularly concerning their customer service skills, you may want to think about testing the waters a little bit. For instance, if you run a retail store, ask your job applicants what they would stay to a customer after they checked them out. If you get a response like I dont know, the applicant you are interviewing may not be the perfect match for you and your business. As you already know, the perfect response would be Thank you for your business and have a nice day.

The above mentioned questions are just a few of the many that you may want to ask any job applicants that you bring in for an interview. After the first couple of interviews, interviewing potential candidates will come to you naturally, as if it were like a walk in the park.

A growing number of small businesses that have previously faced obstacles getting working capital now have a practical solution they can bank on. They’re taking a cash advance on future credit card receivables. This method of getting needed capital is gaining momentum, particularly in light of the inundation of Small Business Administration loan requests during recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast.

The cash advances taken by these credit-worthy businesses are called Merchant Cash Advances and are completed without the time, documentation and availability issues associated with a traditional loan.

Here’s how it works. Companies such as AdvanceMe (www.advanceme.com), the nation’s leading provider of merchant cash advances, purchase a portion of small- and mid-size businesses’ future credit card sales. These assets, which traditional lenders and investors do not value, help business owners to access capital quickly and easily without leveraging their homes or other personal assets. Businesses simply sell AdvanceMe a portion of their future credit card sales at a discount in exchange for a lump sum of working capital today.

The process has a number of advantages for merchants:

• It helps small businesses manage their cash flow throughout the year. This is especially valuable to businesses whose day-to-day operations are impacted by seasonality, such as those in small college towns. It gives them access to the cash necessary to weather the seasons, whether or not it’s their busy season.

• Often, a Merchant Cash Advance is preferred over a traditional bank loan because payment of the obligation is directly tied to the merchant’s revenue. In this way, the Merchant Cash Advance Vendor only gets paid when the business gets paid.

• It provides business owners with the capital to fund marketing and advertising campaigns, purchase equipment, train employees andor attend industry seminars, which they might otherwise not be able to do.

First steps: choosing the business

When I was thinking about starting an internet business there were a few things that were must have requirements.

The first one was that I needed to be able to get the business to profitability for less than 1600 (100). In practice each site has cost more than that when you figure in the marketing costs needed to get it off the ground quickly. The silk tie retailing site was set up for less than 300 but when you factor in marketing spend, then I have spent almost 800 per month on marketing, mostly Google Adwords and Overture. It is only after month three that I have got close to breaking even. Anyway, near enough and if you are more patient and make less costly mistakes than me then you should be able to do it for less.

Secondly. The business had to need as little manual work as possible. I am after a business that I can start working part time and as am a management consultant and sell my time by the hour, for me time really is money. I am also not keen on hiring people if I can avoid it. The internet has the potential to offer some really virtual businesses and I wanted to use this. For this reason as well as start-up costs this means that I do not want to stock or handle any products. I do a lot of supply chain consulting work so it was obvious to me that I could have a business that used other companies to buy, store and deliver the products. The easiest way to do this is by using dropshipping. Dropshippers are wholesalers that ship individual customer orders direct to your customers.

There is a lot of information on dropshipping online, however it has to be said that there are some terrible dropshipping companies where prices are too high or products too common to successful. Typical of these is thSelect which charges a fee to join, but once you join you find that the prices are often higher than they are being sold for on eBay and are widely sold with lots of competition. It is very hard to make good money from these sort of dropshippers. There are however some good companies out there with niche products where achievable margins are good.

The third requirement was that the business needed to have the potential to generate at least 1k per month in profit. That way with a few web businesses it could become my full time job. I decided that I was not trying to start the next Amazon, instead I was after a good profitable niche. Something not too competitive and with no house-hold names as competitors. This means that I have not gone into electronics even though it is the area I know the best, it is a very competitive market online and were competition includes Amazon and Dixons. To be successful in electronics you either need to find a niche not served by the big boys or spend serious money to get established.

I then started searching for business ideas. I read the get rich quick newsletters, internet marketing newsletters, internet business forums and drop shipping websites. I searched for dropship suppliers then when I found a product that I thought might be promising, did a search for it and checked out the competition. If after that it still looked interesting then I did a keyword search on Google AdWords to find out how many clicks I could get and at what cost.

While doing this I came across some sites selling ready-made business websites. Essentially they provide a shop template, a catalogue and a supplier of stock and off you go. These sell for between 50 (80) and 500 (800). I wasted a fair bit of money with a couple of false starts. I bid on a lingerie web business template on eBay with a starting price of 99; my wife was a lingerie merchandiser for Marks & Spencers and so I though she could help, then I saw a gadgets website from the same people and thought I would get that and see if I could find a gadgets niche and bid for that too. Trouble was I then did some more research and found that lingerie was very competitive online and that the supplier I would be getting had a limited selection of very tarty undies at rather high prices. I also found that the gadget supplier was the Select and as I have already said they are overpriced. I then found the tie web business and decided this was a better niche where margins really are 60% and bought that one from DpbUK who have been very good. Unfortunately no one else bid on the two on eBay and I ended up winning them although I no longer wanted them. 300 wasted. Oops. So do your homework carefully before buying; look carefully at the sample sites and try and find some clues to the suppliers, check the competition out and make sure the margins are high enough.

Benefits of Outsourcing Accounts Payable in small and lager Business

Every individual running a company wants to be free of encumber of paying money which they owe to anyone as soon as possible. Accounts payable accurately means the money which a company owes to sellers for products and services which have been bought from them on credit. If you are result it complicated to keep a follow of the amount of your accounts payable. This is just right way to contract with this condition.

When you are management a company, keeping track and managing of things like accounts payable, can become very difficult and wild. We provide Accounts Payable Services to clients all over the world. However this is a significant feature of any company process and has to done and done in time. Accounts payable outsourcing services are presented by many businesses which deal with finance and accounting outsourcing.

The accounts payable processes have important contact on the earnings of a company. Companies use up enormous amounts of money every year to process invoices, implement get order matching, address deficiency and respond to dealer inquiries. If the accounts payable system is not efficient, a company has to allow the additional cost of late payment consequence, missed discounts, reproduction payments and rewrite. With an enlarged focus on cost reduction and enhanced fiscal management, executive management teams are realizing the profit of a successful accounts payable process.

Accounts Payable outsourcing services at India are paying attention at convert our customers entire payment movement by successfully automating the processes of transaction management, documents management, elimination of duplication, exception resolution and disbursement-related services. Our Accounts Payable Outsourcing Services at India offer our worldwide customers the suppleness to outsource all or part of their accounts payable business purposes. Accounts payable solutions superior workflow and imaging technology, best practices, and high levels of superiority make certain that we process the clients Accounts Payable proficiently and exactly.

Accounts payable outsourcing has many advantages. One of the major advantages is that you can save enormous amounts of income through the outsourcing work. Work is outsourced generally to increasing countries where there is great quantity of manpower. This automatically means that your accounts payable outsourcing work will be handled by trained professionals at a very cheap rate. The profits which you will save in this approach the profit for your business.